Monday, August 24, 2015

This is where I've been collecting various means to color and patina metals, opening the doors to a lot of design elements I've not tried before.

Today's experiment has involved an Alphonse Mucha style stamping. I could only find it in this silver color, and I needed a brass/gold finish. The results:

At first, I tried the Brass Swellegant metal coating as the base layer. The details for this piece are so fine (the stamping is only 1.25 inches), the coat was very thin, and didn't want to play well with the Gilders Paste, despite being sealed. The Iris Blue has a lot of green undertones, which cooled the color of the brass finish appreciably.

On a second stamping, I decided to try the highlight color as the underlayment, using the Vintaj Patina coating. It took some doing to get it into the details and keep it a thin coat, but it worked. I took a stiff dry brush, held it sideways, and gently applied the gold Gilders. Much closer to the look I wanted, so I now I know to work "backwards" when I want this kind of effect.

I've got to get back over to the jewelry worktable (we'll save that photo for another day) so I can finish something "seaworthy" for the August Design Challenge over in the Facebook Creative Group page for B'Sue Boutiques...join us!